Jack E. Dunning

From his early years working in television, in its beginning stages when everything was live, Jack Dunning was writing copy for commercials and occasionally a short feature, but there was always that desire to write something bigger. During all this time he toyed with the short story but didn’t yet have the expertise to really put words together. Writing copy in the junk mail business provided no relief to his aspirations, but he still knocked out an occasional short story and read The Writer magazine religiously. One day while still living in So. California he attended a weekend course on how to write fiction and the instructor was that one-in-a-million kind who knew how to bring out the best in his students. Jack really caught the bug at about the time he decided to retire and it wasn’t long before he had completed his first novel.

He lives with his wife, who has been the inspiration and cornerstone for his writing, and four cats in Cave Creek, Arizona.

Nymphomania Bloodlust

Horror

Arizona isn’t quite ready for an oversexed, bisexual housewife, who suddenly becomes a supernatural creature with a mission to kill targeted Arizona politicians in my new novel, NYMPHOMANIA BLOODLUST. Amy Rogers is a nymphomaniac vampire who bites her way through several politicos, including the Governor, along with innocent citizens. Add to that Arnold “Arnie” Barber, a 65 year-old Midwestern snowbird turned werewolf, spawned for the same objective, and you have a paranormal war going on in Phoenix, Arizona. NYMPHOMANIA BLOODLUST is a soft-horror novel—described so because the several vampires and werewolves are amateurs—mixing the violence of preternatural beings with the escapades of Amy Rogers as the hot-to-trot vampire who must satisfy her sexual needs along with the insatiable desire for blood. The book starts and ends in the Superstition Mountains, just southeast of Phoenix. The mountains and Jacob “Dutchie” Walzer’s Lost Dutchman Mine have been a great source of interest to tourists, hikers and greedy prospectors, some of which have suffered the wrath of these rugged cliffs and valleys.

Without the Lampshade - How I Learned to Love My Brown Martini

Memoir/Humor

During the period covered in my book, WITHOUT THE LAMPSHADE - How I Learned to Love my Brown Martini, my expectations were that I would not live past the age of fifty-five based on the amount of booze I drank and the number of cigarettes I smoked. When I shared this with friends and relatives, and they saw me in action, they agreed. Somehow I made it to eighty-four and decided I was meant to chronicle these hilarious years of inebriation. Here is some of the fun and games.

Did you ever wake up under a chicken coop covered with overnight droppings? I have. Have you ever barbecued yourself on a hot stove? I did. Have you ever come home smashed, ending up the unintended clown for your daughters’ sleepover? I did. Can you turn into Fred Astaire on the dance floor after several drinks? I can. Were you ever so hungover you forgot your own name? I was. Have you ever, in an inebriated state, almost run into a house on wheels in the middle of the street you were driving on? I did. Did you ever turn down a drink that tanked a business? I did.

I once went with my brother-in-law for a haircut, an excuse to go to a bar, and lost him for three days. In Vegas at the 21 table I drank myself into oblivion just because the drinks were free. I almost fell off the roof of the Peabody Hotel, smashed, looking for the famous ducks. Once I spent fifteen minutes behind a parked car after smoking pot and drinking martinis, because I thought the car was turning right. I had a three-martini lunch with Dorothy Parker. I was saved by my daughter from asphyxiation when I passed out in a running car in front of our house.

“WITHOUT THE LAMPSHADE - How I Learned to Love my Brown Martini” is my tale of boozing through roughly twenty-five years of my life, performing some hilarious antics that defy belief. In a quarter century I made it my job, a career, if you will, to pursue hard drinking in lieu of becoming the typical working stiff. It was more important to get to the bar for the first drink than work late for advancement. But I was still lucky, mostly finding people and companies that drank as much as I did. I was a happy drunk that has one hell of an adventure to relate.